Music as Touch

Anne Fernald is a psychology professor at Stanford who directs the Center For Infant Studies.  Dr. Fernald specializes in children’s language development. She believes there is a kind of universal music inside language, and first made this observation at a hospital in Munich, where the obstetric ward was full of Turkish, Sicilian, Greek, Russian, Dutch and Jewish women.

Dr. Fernald couldn’t understand anything these mothers spoke. However, the moment they put their babies down, and no longer were touching them, the mothers starting to almost “sing” to their babies. They used “spoken melodies” to remain in touch with their babies.  (Think about how you speak to your infant – “There you are, Livvy.  Hello beautiful girl!”) Try it right now. Imagine you are speaking to baby who is lying on her blanket on the floor.

So Dr. Fernald packed up her tape recorder and went off all over the world, recording how parents talked to their very young babies.  It did not matter if the language spoken was a romance language or a tone language; she heard the same melodies. When a parent wanted to show the child they were happy, the melody was always a rise-fall, no matter the language. “Good boy! You got it!” She saw that the melody kept the child doing a behavior or action.

There are three other universal melodies as well. If a parent wanted their child to stop, the melody was short and sharp and staccato. “Wait. Stop. No.” To draw a child’s attention to something, the melody was a higher, rising pitch – “Look at the horsie.” The fourth melody is one of comfort. “Oh, sweetie. I’ll be right there.”

This is music that is understood by infants who are just new in the world. We all know these songs and what they mean, no matter what language is being spoken. To Dr. Fernald, this isn’t about the language, or even the words; it’s about the sounds. The sounds which are more like touch. Do these sounds startle or caress us gently? She defines sound as “touch as a distance”.

Looking back, I see that I did this same thing with my own babies, as well as other little ones I currently come into contact with. Parents everywhere speak “music as touch”, (it’s technically called “motherese”), and no one taught us. And it doesn’t matter if we are in a public place; we do it without regard for who might overhear. What an interesting, universal, musical language.

If you are interested in hearing the whole podcast, you may listen here.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who just realized she is instinctively using this same “motherese” on her son’s Christmas present – a 4 ½ month old beagle puppy. She’s not sure if it’s working yet.